I have a 9 year old Jeep. It's gets 17 MPG. A newer, more efficient car would cost me 3 grand, at least (for a real shitbox). At $4.25 a gallon, that's 705 gallons of gas. That is significantly more than a year's worth of gas for me. Say I wanna get something decent, for around $10-12k. That works out to more than 4 years (nearly 5) of driving the POS Jeep. I'll keep the Jeep and when it dies or pisses me off too much I'll replace it.

On my last call a coworker showed sent me a really cool link. His twin brother works for Google and travels all of Europe supporting their DataCenters. Google has all their employees agree to secrecy and he would never share details about the DCs are what it is he does. However, Google has had a change of heart and he gave us this link that showcases some of the technology in Google's DCs. The hot aisles are very interesting and you get to see the custom Google Server Appliances they have built for just them:

I'm sure it could probably handle myself and your wife, and probably a cat as well, assuming that it doesn't tear up the upholstery and isn't prone to car-sickness. (Fun fact: a sick cat is capable of vomiting three times its own body weight.)